Magic, history, and the roles we are given. This is a story following four people who want to restore magic to Ricer City after its decline twenty years ago. Each of the characters has a complex and layered relationship to gender, sexuality and magic. Let me first start off by saying I love the cover of this book and the premise of this book sounds so interesting. Now, onto the more difficult, the way the story is written and told is a bit confusing, the narrative use of “we” and “us” and constant changing of “he” and “she” left me trying to piece together what was going on and who was what as well as the whole archetype thing of -maiden, king, monster, etc going on. This story deals with abuse, both physically and mentally, and so many of the characters were abused but the abuse isn’t really properly addressed in about the first 50% of the book. The book started off great but the more I read on the more I lost interest and got confused about what was going on. Theres nothing really explained about these characters and the romance was meh at best. The characters ( except for Turing) felt flat and I truly don’t see how much of an emotional investment you can have for them and expect to have to go forth into a second book when they dont have any personality beyond the superficial elements. The multiple povs does not help the plot itself, it just complicates it and the pacing was also a drag. I adored the author’s other book and this one had so much potential but miss the mark for me.This was on my list of most anticipated books and it just fell flat unfortunately. I feel horrible and bad about giving this book such a low review when I adored the author’s previous work but this was just my experience and well I do hope you give this book a chance and hopefully its a better experience for you.

*Thanks Netgalley and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*